Impromptu Rescue

Who: Nic and Jesse
When: morning
Where: on the way to school

Jesse couldn't remember the dude's name, but he knew that he'd given him hell the year before last in school. He'd been a sophomore, and Crazy Shithead Dude had been a senior. Apparently college hadn't worked out, so he'd taken the first opportunity to turn insane. Jesse hadn't seen him coming as he trudged his way to school through the snow, headphones firmly in place. He would've gotten a ride, but his mom had a treatment that morning, so he volunteered to walk. It was easy for him to block everything out. But Dude certainly had his attention when his 'phones had been snatched off of his head. In the few moments since then, there'd been nonsensical shouted words about the end of the world and the ghosts being one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse or some shit. It was hard to listen when you were pinned up against the side of a building.

"You really need to brush your teeth more, man," Jesse said as the crazy bastard got in all close again. He had his eyes squeezed shut, his glasses had gotten knocked off at some point, and he could only hope that neither of them had stepped on them.

"Think you know shit, Jericho? Huh?! You don't know shit, man, not shit! This shit is going down and you're just out walking to school like nothing's going down, man, it's fuckin' crazy," the scruffy-faced guy railed at him.

Maybe it was the delay in Jesse's route that had Nic intersecting with him today, or maybe he normally got a ride from his folks. All she knew was that she'd never seen him before. And initially, she still hadn't. Trudging along towards the school with her hood covering her headphones, Nic's head was bouncing as she brought a travel mug of coffee to her lips blearily. Even when she didn't have the dreams, she just wasn't a morning person. Coffee helped, so did Clutch blasting in her ears.

But neither of those things snapped her senses into awareness like the sight at the top of her angled vision of feet moving in agitation. Two sets, both taking little scrambly steps around a set of discarded glasses. Too early for this shit. Fucking hockey player mating ritual homoerotic bullshit, she groused silently, turning a sour gaze up at the commotion where it quickly grew outright menacing. There was Jesse in the grip of... Dale? Was that his name? All Nic remembered was that he constantly reeked of chewing tobacco. Sighing, Nic snapped the lid of her coffee loose as she started towards the two of them. "Wanna let him go, you Deliverance-looking motherfucker?" she snapped at the bigger guy's back as she advanced.

Jesse's eyes open, for all the good they did. Which was to say, none. All he saw were dark blurs against lighter blurs mixed with colored blurs. He thought that voice was familiar, but he couldn't place it at the moment, assaulted as he was with the flashes and memories coming off of Crazy Motherfucker at a breakneck pace. It was all a little disorienting, without even being near-blind on top of it.

Dale's head twisted around to look at who was daring to interrupt his preaching time, and scowled in a highly unattractive way. "Fuck you, dyke whore, you're already damned," he snapped back at Nic, giving Jesse a shake for good measure that bounced the back of his head off of the brick behind it. "Hey now, that's a little judgemental," the Reader put in as he winced but did nothing to defend himself.

A little? Nic wondered, feeling her temper coil tight and snap out like a snake. "I might be damned? But you're burning," she spat, grabbing Dale by one shoulder and hauling him away from Jesse. She twisted him off with the strength most guys didn't expect a girl to have; the results of autoshop work. The moment there was room, her hand with the mug snapped out, whipping the still-steaming coffee across his crotch. And while most girls might've left the defiance there, she had things she'd been wanting to try out.

Nic snapped a foot out low in a trip like she'd been shown, kicking into the back of Dale's knee to buckle his leg and smashing the mug across his cheek as he staggered, dropping him smoothly. Jesse was sightless, Dale was down, she could allow herself a moment to blink in surprise. It worked... "Got more shit you want to try and say while you're choking on my Chucks, bitch?" she growled menacingly, nudging Jesse's glasses clear of the fracas with her other foot.

"Ffffuck you," Dale the Crazy Bastard slurred out as he struggled to his feet. It took some effort, and once he had, he was scampering off -- in a limping, ball-hurty way -- before anything else could happen to him.

The whole thing was a mess and completely indistinguisable to Jesse, but the victorious voice was clear enough to pick out of the end. And he recognized it, at last! It was Nic, awesome Nic who seemed to have ... kicked some guy's ass and saved him from rank breath and a possible ass-beating because he didn't believe the world was coming to an end. He just stood there and blinked uselessly, until there was only one darker blur left. "I think in Asshole, that translates into 'so nice to see you, ma'am, have a glorious day'," he deadpanned.

The moment Jesse's attacker had put even a little space between them, Nic had bent over to recover Jesse's glasses, tucking a hand into her sleeve to wipe slush from the lenses. "That, or 'you beat my ass, but I made you waste your coffee'," she suggested with a smirk, sighing at the empty mug in her grip and carefully returning Jesse's glasses to one of his hands. "You all good, Jericho? Want me to go chase that tool down and prolapse his rectum or something?"

Jesse chuckled a little, and looked a mixture of surprised and grateful as his fingers wrapped around his glasses. Oh good, they were intact. He put them on, blinked a couple of times to focus, and really looked at her. "Nah, it's not worth the chase, even," he said, giving Nic a smile that was slightly sheepish. "Sometimes people just need to vomit their crazy all over, and he used to shove me in lockers and shit, so I guess that Pavlovian training kicked in again. All good. You? Coffee mug salvageable?" He straightened his messenger bag and went to where he'd dropped a couple of books to pick them off and shake the snow off.

"Man, once a cuntmonkey, always a cuntmonkey," Nic muttered in the direction the guy had run off in before looking back to Jesse. She stretched the foot she'd kicked with testingly, nodding in confirmation as she smiled from inside the folds of her hood. "My trusty mug and I are all good," she assured him, winking, "Ready to strike fear in the hearts of religious idiots everywhere." Of course, now that it was all done, she was studying Jesse more carefully, making sure he'd just been shaken around a little. If it was more? Headstart or no, that guy was in trouble. "The pisser is that I can't tell my mom she's getting her money's worth for kickboxing, y'know? She'd be all 'Nic, you've been using that for violence?'."

Jesse wasn't any worse for wear. There was a spot on his nose that was kind of scraped and a little throbby from when his glasses had gotten knocked off, but he was otherwise fine. The douchebag seemed to have wanted more of a captive audience than anything. The blonde psychic gave a snort of a laugh and shook his head, restacking his books and reaching up to push hair out of his face. "Cuntmonkey for that dude I think goes back too far in his genes to ever be alterted. We'd have to put his whole kind down to keep it from spreading," he said, amused. He put his headphones back where they belonged, around his neck, and looked up at her. "Thanks," he said, seeing as how she'd kind of gone above and beyond and everything. "See any good movies lately?"

Nic had to laugh at the somewhat-randomness of his question, shaking her head at Jesse. At least he was okay. And though she wasn't fully aware of it? She felt good for that fact, like the yawning absence inside of her had contracted a little. "I like to try and watch a flick a day? But no, nothing good," she said, shrugging as Nic fished out her cigarettes. They weren't too far from school, she'd need to try and powersmoke two before they got there to hold her over until lunch. "But you know me. If it's got blood or rubber masks in it? I'm down." And since she remembered Jesse at the video store before, she thought he might be too.

"I watched The Cave, and it was decent," he said with a nod, always game to tip someone off to a decent movie. That, and talking about movies was far more interesting than discussing what had just happened. Being beaten up was a pretty regular occurrence for him -- or had been before he got to be a senior, at least -- and was just ... run of the mill. To boot, there was no ego bruising that he was saved by a girl. She was a cool chick that stuck up for him, and that was cool, and he thanked her, and that was that. He started a slow-walk in the direction he was headed before, not in any real rush to get to school. As she lit up, he got a flash of memory of her lighting up somewhere else, without a hood, and let it pass on through him. "So the ghosts are pretty fucked up," he said conversationally.

Scowling in annoyance as a fat snowflake soaked the paper of her cigarette and made it sizzle, Nic looked Jesse's way without a flicker in the expression. 'Pretty fucked up' didn't really convey it for her. "I already saw The Cave," she said first, shoulders shrugging, "It was okay, should've been bloodier. And... yeah, they're something. I talked to one the other day? Guess I shouldn't be surprised that dead people are bitchy, but they are. Still, it's better than them throwing chairs or possessing people or something, huh?"

"I dunno, maybe tight spaces fuck my shit up," Jesse said with an equal shrug. At least she wasn't freaking out about the ghosts. He was going to continue asking people, because goddamn, if they couldn't accept what was right in front of their face now, they never would. Squinting up at the sky and blinking as a couple of snowflakes landed on his glasses, Jesse started walking faster. "Yeah, guess so. I haven't tried to talk to many, most of the ones I've seen have been kinda ... disoriented and flickery. Despite the bitchy, did they have anything interesting to say?" he asked, looking over at her.

"Fuck no," Nic muttered with a flash of annoyance, pulling heavily on her cigarette. "It was this chick? And she was just harping on 'oh it was so much better in the seventies! We were all shiny and everyone had their tongue in everyone else's butthole!' and then seemed surprised when I said she was lying to herself." Nic smirked darkly, shoulders bunching in a shrug. "Maybe being dead makes you stupid? But I doubt we've been nice to each other as a species since the days when we were still covered in fur and scared of our own shadows." She sped up to match Jesse's stride, watching him instead of the path ahead of them as they walked. "In summary? You're not missing much in this town, whether the people are alive or dead."

Jesse really had to laugh, and heartily, at Nic's summary of the conversation. He could see how that would've been aggravating, sure, but it was damn hilarious from his end at the moment. "There are pockets of niceness here and there, but as a species? Hell no. She was probably just naive then, naive now. Being dead doesn't grow you up, apparently," he said, still grinning in an amused sort of way. He wasn't a cynic, not really deep down, but he liked hanging around with them when he got the opportunity. Biting sarcasm had it's place in nearly everything. "If I happen to meet her, I'll be sure and give her your regards," he said, grinning over at her.

"Apparently exorcisms work," Nic observed thoughtfully, not sure if she should be saying as much. Jesse didn't seem like the kind of guy who'd go running for some holy water, though, so it was probably safe. "She nearly shit ectoplasm when I even joked about one, so I think they're legit. And no, being dead doesn't do much on a personal level, I think. She seemed like she'd been bored a damn long time." But Nic wasn't looking to dwell on Lauren and how they'd pissed each other off, so she forced the subject from her mind as she flicked away her cigarette. "Even if a lot of people are going the wrong way with this? All hugging on Jesus and shit? At least they're not ignoring everything any more," she muttered, wishing people had come to their senses much, much sooner. Herself included.

The blonde honestly could see how being dead would drive someone to supreme and painful boredom, and cause some quirks of the personality to develop. He wasn't positive that he could handle that sort of solitude, himself. As much as he was bombarded with other people, being suddenly so cut off? Which made him wonder if he'd still be a psychic after death. It was a path his brain had never gone down, and just the concept that it was possible was weird. Which didn't have anything to do with anything, but his thoughts rarely did. "That is one boon, yes," he agreed with Nic, nodding sagely. "It's sparked some insanity, but at least most everyone has pulled their head out of their asses when it comes to the fact that there is a broad and varied world around them." He didn't give much thought to how much or how long Nic had known, he was just talking.

Jesse may not have been giving much thought, but Nic suddenly was. She turned to regard him intently as she listened, fishing out a last cigarette as the school grounds loomed in the distance. "Broad and varied how?" Nic asked neutrally, fishing for an expanded answer. How much did he know? Once upon a time, Nic wouldn't have suspected much. But after Caleb, Ash, Nate, and Drea had all shown their knowledge to some extent, she wasn't writing anyone off any more. "Like... maybe if there's ghosts, there's other shit too?" she ventured.

Jesse looked over with one eyebrow arched over the black plastic of his glasses. Did she really not know? She'd seemed so cool about the ghosts, her shit wasn't freaked or anything. "There is other shit, no 'maybe' about it," he said, with no derision in it. It was just absolute certainty. Hell, he was some of the other shit. He had no problem telling her straight out, either; she'd either accept it or write him off as off his rocker like most everybody else did. He was used to it by this point in his life. "With the shit this town has seen in the past few months, it's honestly baffling to me that people are just now starting to pay attention to what's been right in front of their faces all this time. I mean ... no offense if you're a noobie to this shit, but a roving gang of bikers? Fuckin' rabid bear attacks? Come on now. When you get into explanations that are that ludicrous, the supernatural makes more sense," he said, and realized he'd kind of hopped up on a soapbox.

She felt a sense of relief as Jesse vented over all the details Nic had been putting together for herself in recent days, nodding a slow agreement. "I kinda figured the same?" she said, peering out of her hood at Jesse, "But with the rep I have, I think if I went up to anyone and said "motherfucker, werewolves' they'd just figure I was fucking with them." Hell, her own mother had seen the carnage firsthand, but had stubbornly refused the idea that literal monsters had caused it. "But yeah, I'm pretty fresh in it all. Playing catch-up as fast as I can, though." And she felt good on that score at least; she'd started studying the basic tenets of witchcraft, her kickboxing was obviously going well, and even if she'd had a few private freakouts? They always ended, and they'd been largely self-contained so far.

He chuckled a bit, very easily able to picture her walking up to people and saying 'motherfucker, werewolves.' It just seemed to fit. Seemed like a kind of shitty thrown-in-the-deep-end sort of way to get introduced to shit, but hell. What were you gonna do. "Well, welcome, have a seat, all our cookies are stale as fuck," he said sardonically. Then paused. "Really, though ... I'm not like, a reference book or anything? But I've seen some shit. You're fairly cool, and it would be awesome if your future was chock-full of survival. ...not that I'm some ninja-master or anything, I'm just sayin'. Forewarned if forearmed and shit, so if you have any questions, I might have answers." Which was a a really roundabout way to offer help, but hey, what could you do.

"Boy, you'd better believe I have questions," Nic assured Jesse with an earnest grin. "I'm doing some studying already? Got a few books I've been working through, but they're pretty generalized. So once I know where I need to focus, you know I'll be bugging you for dirty little details." She sucked down a lungful of smoke, hesitant to ask her next question just because of how Nic might feel if it came at her. "What, um... what sort of shit have you seen?"

That was the thing, though, wasn't it? He hadn't seen so much as he'd seen what other people saw. Which made his continued existence a lot more difficult to explain. He was open enough about his gift, but it wasn't a conversation to really have on the sidewalk. Especially with crazies around. Not to mention they were close to the school now. "All kinda shit," he said. "The details and explanations of which I gotta take a raincheck on, toots. Not the time or place, really. ... and that's not just me tryin' to sound mysterious, I swear," he added with a crooked grin.

That was nearly a confirmation of Nic's suspicions, and she fixed a curious look on Jesse as he promised to explain later. "One condition," she insisted, "Don't ever call me 'toots' again or you'll need someone to save you from me. Past that? Yeah, just make sure you drop some knowledge my way when it's cool." She wanted to know, but he was right; this wasn't the sort of talk you wanted to have right before heading to class. "We'll have to chill sometime, watch Frankenhooker or something since I didn't get to on Halloween."

Jesse chuckled and made a mental note. No overly-girly pet names for Nic. It was do-able, even if his mouth tended to get away from him sometimes. "Definitely, we'll have to do that," he agreed as they strolled through the snow onto the school's campus. "Soon, this week. I don't have shit goin' on, so just lemme know when. Or I'll let you know when, either way. My folks don't mind people over, if your's do, so ... yeah." It was casual enough not to sound desperate, but damn. He needed more people to hang out with, some of them had disappeared.

When had she become so social? Nic wasn't sure, but between Jesse, Drea, Caleb, and now the plan to meet Dean today, it had definitely happened. She supposed that it wasn't a bad thing, seeing as how it hadn't turned her into a blithering idiot like all the people she detested at school, but it still felt... weird. "Yeah, we'll figure something out for sure," Nic agreed, genuinely eager to find out what Jesse could share. Besides which, she knew he caught a fair amount of shit at school, so the guy probably needed someone to keep an eye on him. "I swap out work and kickboxing four nights a week, but after classes or whatever I'm usually down to chill. And my mom's always cool with me having people by, it's one more piece of evidence that I'm not gonna go on a shooting spree."

"Cool then, I'll just catch you after school someday soon," he said with a faint smile and a nod. They were getting close enough that they'd probably catch some shit for walking up together, and he wanted to spare her that if he could. Jesse tipped her a little salute and made to veer off in another direction. "Take it easy, Nic, thanks again," he said before he got too far away. The back of his head hurt, but he wasn't really any worse for wear, and there'd been a connection in it all, so. Not an awful morning so far.

Well, wasn't that a pleasant surprise? Nic apparently didn't even have to try to preserve her solo image as she approached. She grinned Jesse's way as he branched off, flipping a middle finger up at him in parting. "Stay cool, Jericho, hit me up and we'll chill," she said, flipping her cigarette away behind her as she moved into the throng of cars in the parking lot. All she needed now was for things to go this well at lunch. And for the fucking snow to stop, Nic mused, shaking a light dusting free of her hood as she headed in.